Virgil & Lucretius

Virgil & Lucretius - Passages translated by William Stebbing

[3] Orpheus and Eurydice P. Virgilii Maronis Georgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 453-527 This is the tale old Proteus by the sea Erst told of Orpheus and Eurydice. Virgil at Parthenope overheard, And has resung it, if not word by word. Orpheus had been espoused but one short hour, And went to gather roses for the bower, When a rejected wooer, mad with love, Sprang upon the light-footed nymph, and strove For an embrace; she, heeding nought, alas! Trod on a serpent sleeping in the grass; And when on the instant, answering her cries, Her Bridegroom knelt there, kissing her closed eyes, Half fainting with the sense of all her charms, Sudden he woke, a dead Bride in his arms! Not his alone the woe and misery; Nor he sole mourner for Eurydice; From Rhodope to Pangas peaks, above The cave where Boreas hid his Attic love, Through the fierce realm of Rhesus, echo bore The wail to the wild Getes, to the shore Of Hebrus, while in forest, hill, and dale The tuneful Dryads told the tearful tale. But how conjure by the best ordered show Of grief an irremediable woe! Orpheus fled Pity, and neighbourly Care; All human fellowship but his despair. With but that and his lyre communion still He held, from dawn to sunset, then until The planets rose and sank, banishing sleep, Keeping sad vigils by the moaning deep, Thinking each shadow on the desert shore Was his lost Bride restored to life once more.[5] And was it days, weeks, months, or years?at last From the ghost-haunted waters coastward passed Whether Goddess, or Womana pale shape, That beckoned to the far Laconian Cape Of Tnarus, where the dread cavern draws Each generation down its hungry jaws. At the first touch of his lyre opened wide The lofty gates of Hell; he paced inside The grove impenetrable by but him; A darkness that might be felt, stark, and grim, Where bide the awful ministers of Dis, With hearts that never beat at prayer but his. And still the notes rose bravely; and still he Came, calling on his lost Eurydice; On her, sole burden of his love-lorn cries One theme informing countless melodies. At the sweet sorrowing, awhile a hush Amazementthroughout Hades; then a rush A quick rustling rather, as when a flight Of birds seeks where to sleep at fall of night, Or, cowring, courts, against an icy breeze, Multitudinous foliage of trees. Thusfor the jailers ceased from watch and ward, Witched themselves by the wailing, wandering bard Flocked, from the unamiable swamp, which feeds Nothing on its black slime but grisly reeds Where steams and groans Cocytus, and Styx holds Prisoners within its nine coils and folds[6] A legion of the newly dead, entombed In Limbo, till ripe to be tried and doomed; A fearful gathering, bodies stripped of life, Yet moving; some in pairs, husband and wife, Girls who had virgins died, and beardless youths, With parents kisses warm upon their mouths; And some though freed from flesh ignorant where Their dwelling fixed, sad phantoms, thin as air. Each waiting judgment; now forgetting all Griefs in a greater, in the musical Challenge to Dis to yield its prey; while, on And on, the chant rolled, till its way it won Past the black realms of ancient Erebus, Past too the torture cells of Tartarus, Where cold-blue snakes, the Furies locks that tied, By the trespassing strain, charmed, stupefied, Drew in their fangs, Ixions wheel made pause, And, one shocked wide gape, stood Cerberuss triple jaws.[7] At last, at last! a Palace flaming high With angry flashes from a mocking sky; And, seated on twin thrones, the King and Queen, Garbed in life-which-is-deaths Infernal sheen; Both silent; but, as whispered soft and low The lyre, stern Proserpine remembered how A girl plucked flowers. As nursery rhymes On dying ears, returned old happy times, Sunshine, and the sweet thought, if mixed with pain, A mothers toil to have her child again. Paradise for Hells Queen once more to know That She had heart to feel for others woe! For her Lord to see, transfigured, ere a crown Burned on her brow, the maid he had brought down To Hell; and she answering his eyes, cried: Minstrel, depart in peace, and with thy Bride! The Manes registered the high decree, Adding that, since no mortal eyes may see Spirit take flesh, Orpheus must be resigned, Till Earth was reached, never to look behind. And as they wrote and sealed what their Queen spoke, From unseen instruments weird music broke, An owlets hooting, a swans dying cry A rapture near akin to agony.[8] Orpheus turned, or was led; more felt than heard Passing the gatesas when a babe has stirred, Dreaminga sigh; but, venturing no glance Anywhere, or speech, walked as in a trance. Save, as if strings snapt, the lyre stammered out A spasm of jarred notes wandering about, Nor glad nor sad; the harper scarce aware Of the music that he made; or how far He had gone, through what scenes of bale or bliss, Since he quitted the royal halls of Dis; Trembling only lest the whole dream might take Flight, like his rapt girl-Bride, and he awake To find himself, widowed, lost, as before, Companionless upon the wild sea-shore. And yet. Was it not breath, a womans breath, Fanning his cheeks? Could even unkind Death Have the heart to cheat, with the goal so near? Was not the light he saw days, warm and clear? And, sure, the landscape spread before his view Was of meadows and woods, all which he knew? Phantoms, begone! Here was his spring-tide come, And his Bride with him, out of Hades, home! Sudden, an avalanchecompoundEarth, Hell Long chainedirresistible passionfell, Defying thought, fear! his hand left the string But just caressed; his throat forbore to sing That he might clasp and kiss;one look behind! A world of travail scattered to the wind![9] Heavn forgives seven sins if love the cause; The plea doubles guilt when Hells the brokn laws. Hark how the grinning host of demons howls! And oh! the crash pealing over Hells pools! Naught heard he, but that cried Eurydice, Regained, re-lost: Alas! for Me and Thee! I feel hands, the inexorable Fates, Speeding back within the Infernal gates; My swimming eyes, just tasting of Earths light, I know are being sealed by a large Night. See! how I stretch vain arms around, and grope For thee in darkness, hoping without hope! Een now how lightly should I life resign, Could I remember I had once been thine! Silence! From sight, hearing, passed she apart, Leaving measureless void within his heart. He ran, striving to clutch a ghost in vain; Pursuing with vain words; never again Looked he upon her; nor could he prevail Upon Hells Ferryman to let him scale The walls, swimming the moat, and again win, By weeping, or by music, his way in, Then move or force its warders to restore His stolen Bride to his fond arms once more. Poor Ghost! No third time destined she to float Over foul Styx in Charons crazy boat! But, hapless, doomed to swell the cavalcades[10] Of lifeless bodies, and of fleshless shades; Nor one, nor other she; just borne along, Drift on the tiderefrain to an old song Yet, flickering, like shadows on a wall, Or rainbow gleaming from a water-fall, A throb, a thrill, a joy though set in dole For Lethe could not wash away the whole That she reward had been of each sharp pang By Orpheus borne, theme of each song he sang.[11] Conscious if voiceless, she. And he? The lyre Which, while its master hoped, had quenched its fire, Was ever confidant of his despair, The instrument commissioned to declare His wrongs. They tell who know, that in a cave Humid and bare, desolate as new grave, At the foot of a tall cliff, hung with ice, By Strymons gloomy waters, for full twice A hundred days and nights, singing he wept; Like a nightingale cruelly bereft Of all her young ones in the poplar grove, With nothing for her any more to love, Or live for, but to gaze upon her nest, And mourn, the night through, all she once possessed, Till overflows the wood where she complains, With the sweet melancholy of her strains. So longed he, and so played; changing at times To lands yet lonelier, and harsher climes; Arctic ice-fields crossed, forded snowy Don, Camped on Scythian heaths, where yews keep-on Eternal pall of frost;always in quest Of postern into Hell, whence he might wrest Audience of its Lords, and with his tale Of unreal gifts, all pre-ordained to fail, Oblige them to repeat for very shame A boon Hell granted only to reclaim. No more than this? This his one hope and theme? This, sum of his powers? And this a dream![12] A dream? And yet the keymagic of Art! Which could unlock at will a tigers heart, And, as notes rose and fell in cadence, made Triumphal arches of each sylvan glade; For true passion a hearing aye commands, And speaks a tongue all Nature understands. No more than that it had killed care to bless More than one life, and left a wilderness! And that it fell on Virgil to recall A legendwould that it lied!how, when all The lands women, Bacchus-fired, and distraught By hymns that Orpheus in glad days had taught, Had pressed him into the wild dance they led Nightly through torch-lit forests, and he fled In horror, as at treason to his love, They, infuriate more the more he strove, Followed, reckless of all but the mad chase, Down to the Hebrus from the hills of Thrace, And tore him limb from limb: but still the tongue, As the wild current rolled the head along, Called on Eurydice; and till the sea Received it, bank to bank returned Eurydice![13] Pardon, my Master, if Ive dared re-think A thought, or, standing on the outer brink Of a deep pool, would with a pebble thrown Measure your depth of feeling by my own. But You the cause, the tempter;who could read A tale like yours, and not pursue each deed From impulse to the actcomplete a scene With such small details as there may have been? So cunningly you made romance to live I trespassed on your stage; You must forgive! ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 66399
Author: Lucretius Carus, Titus
Release Date: Sep 27, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Virgil, 70 BCE-19 BCE


Translator: Stebbing, W. (William), 1832-1926